| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Len. For certaine Sir, he is not: I haue a File
Of all the Gentry; there is Seywards Sonne,
And many vnruffe youths, that euen now
Protest their first of Manhood
Ment. What do's the Tyrant
Cath. Great Dunsinane he strongly Fortifies:
Some say hee's mad: Others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant Fury, but for certaine
He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of Rule
Ang. Now do's he feele
Macbeth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: America. Monsieur Guillaume wore loose black velvet breeches, pepper-
and-salt stockings, and square toed shoes with silver buckles. His
coat, with square-cut fronts, square-cut tails, and square-cut collar
clothed his slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with
white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately
combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a
furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced
with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the
place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many
horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless
face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of wily
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Nancy's--What does one send to the Lighthouse?--opened doors in one's
mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep
asking, in a stupefied gape, What does one send? What does one do?
Why is one sitting here, after all?
Sitting alone (for Nancy went out again) among the clean cups at the
long table, she felt cut off from other people, and able only to go on
watching, asking, wondering. The house, the place, the morning, all
seemed strangers to her. She had no attachment here, she felt, no
relations with it, anything might happen, and whatever did happen, a
step outside, a voice calling ("It's not in the cupboard; it's on the
landing," some one cried), was a question, as if the link that usually
To the Lighthouse |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: then proceed to criticise your utterance from several points of
view, divine and human, in the course of which I shall attempt to
draw again, and with more specification, the character of the dead
saint whom it has pleased you to vilify: so much being done, I
shall say farewell to you for ever.
"HONOLULU,
"August 2, 1889.
"Rev. H. B. GAGE.
"Dear Brother, - In answer to your inquires about Father Damien, I
can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the
extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly
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